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Nearly a year on from raising $7.6 million, social VR network vTime is rebranding and jumping on AR platforms.

The company today launched the AR version of its app on iOS and Android. It joins the already-available VR headset and smartphone app versions where users can make a virtual avatar and meet up. The AR version gives users a full 360-degree diorama to explore with their phones. Most importantly, all versions are compatible with each other, so a VR user can be talking with an AR user.

Take a look at a walkthrough of the AR mode below. Dioramas appear on a flat surface and can be scaled up or down. You can move your phone through the virtual space too. Virtual emojis let you express yourself without the need for VR’s hand controllers.

To coincide with the news vTime is also rebranding as vTime XR. In a press release, the company also noted that this would help it set “the stage for further social VR and AR technologies currently in development.” The company confirmed to UploadVR that the app is coming to Oculus Quest. As for Magic Leap and HoloLens, vTime Managing Director Clemens Wangerin told us that “vTime’s current focus is on consumer platforms. Ultimately, we want to be as cross-reality as we are cross-platform, so when the consumer audience is there, we will be too.”

Remember that incredible boss battle with The End in Metal Gear Solid 3? Sneaking through the forest for hours on end, using camouflage to avoid detection? Sniper’s Ground looks set to capitalize on that in VR.

Indie developer Mohammed Alsharefee introduced this upcoming game to the world this week. It’s a multiplayer shooter in which players trade bullets over massive maps and try and sneak past the enemy. Check it out in the surprisingly pretty trailer above. It’s very much a prototype trailer, though, so expect the final product to look very different.

According to the developer, this will be an in-depth sniping experience. You’ll be able to customize weapons and bullet types and even have to take the wind into account before pulling the trigger. He envisions Sniper’s Ground as a slow-paced action game, more akin to chess than Call of Duty. Expect three maps at launch and different modes include plans for, you guessed it, a battle royale game type.

But Sniper’s Ground needs your help to become a reality. Alsharefee now has a Patron campaign up and running for the game to fund it. He’s hoping to hit $400 a month, which he’d use to pick up a VR headset. Right now he’s using a Kinect and the Trinus VR app on iPhone to develop the game. That can’t be the best way to do it.

A possible release date depends on how much funding the developer gets. It’s coming to PC VR headsets but final platforms also haven’t been announced at this time.

AR headset-maker Magic Leap saw 6,500 developers apply to its recent Independent Creator Program. It’s a figure that “exceeded” the company’s expectations. But, a few days on from the application cutoff point, not everyone’s satisfied.

Announced late last year, the Independent Creator Program promised funding and resources for smaller developers building Magic Leap apps. Studios with less than 20 members could apply for grants between $20,000 – $500,000. At the time, Magic Leap said it would screen applications and decide how much money to provide winners. Successful applicants were also promised free Magic Leap One kits and marketing support among other benefits.

According to the timeline shown on Magic Leap’s site, entrants were to be “offered grants on a rolling basis through February 15, 2019.” In an email sent by Magic Leap to applicants, the company said it would let them know if they had been selected “no later than February 15th, 2019.”

However, three days on from that date some developers still don’t know if they have been selected or not. Magic Leap’s official Twitter account yesterday told people to “Stay tuned for more info on who and what was selected.”

After months of reviewing the most innovative and imaginative ideas #mixedreality has ever seen, we’ve selected the recipients for this year’s #IndependentCreatorProgram. Stay tuned for more info on who and what was selected. pic.twitter.com/IgAZ8Nul80

— Magic Leap (@magicleap) February 17, 2019

Speaking to UploadVR, Chief Content Officer, Rio Caraeff, said that every initial winner had been contacted before February 15th. He said that the company has “been going back and forth, basically with the selected winners, to finalize the paperwork as you do when you have a program of this size which is $10 million.” At the same time, Caraeff said a “small quantity” of developers also turned the grant down due to other commitments.

“And then basically our communication plan was really to start notifying everybody, basically all of the applicants, of the status of the program this coming week because we just started locking in the winners and notifying them Wednesday, Thursday, Friday of last week.”

Developers are free to announce they’ve won, but at the time of writing, we haven’t seen any studios do so.

But what about those that didn’t win? By not immediately notifying other developers as to if they had been successful, the company has left some applicants in suspense. One AR developer told me they had spent around $3,000 on assembling their submission for the grant and had even put off investor meetings in hopes of hearing by now. One developer on Twitter said the situation had them considering dropping Magic Leap support. Over on the official forums, another said they may have to turn down the grant if they aren’t notified by the end of the month.

Caraeff assured me that unsuccessful developers would be notified tomorrow. “I would agree with you that we could improve the process and the wording going forward, and that’s our intention,” he said when asked if he could understand developer’s frustrations. “As you likely

‘Curfew: Join The Race’ is an immersive, interactive VR experience for Oculus Rift inspired by the exhilarating new drama. The Endemol Shine UK Multiplatform team has partnered with immersive content studio REWIND to produce Curfew: Join The Race, which will be available to download for free on the Oculus Rift February 22nd alongside the programme

Samsung is offering an incredible deal this week — its Odyssey+ PC VR headset is just $299. This saves $200 (40%) from the regular $499 price.

Odyssey+ is the refreshed version of the original Odyssey, which was Samsung’s first PC VR headset released in 2017. The Odyssey+ launched in October, adding a new “anti screen door effect” technology to the OLED diplays, as well as ergonomic and weight improvements.

The Odyssey+ is a PC VR headset that leverages Microsoft’s Windows MR platform built into Windows 10. This platform is the default experience for the headset and the Microsoft Store is the default store, but it also works with SteamVR by using Microsoft’s SteamVR drivers.

The Odyssey+ has the same resolution as HTC Vive Pro, yet is significantly cheaper. The Vive Pro with base stations and controllers starts at $1,098.

The main difference in these two headsets is the positional tracking technology. The Vive Pro uses the SteamVR “Lighthouse” tracking system, whereas the Odyssey+ uses the two cameras on the front of the headset for “inside-out” tracking. Lighthouse generally provides better tracking quality with more tracked range for controller motion, but inside-out tracking requires no external hardware setup, making it less hassle and more portable.

When we reviewed the 2017 Odyssey we we impressed, concluding that it sits among the best VR headsets on the market. By some reports, the Odyssey+ is even better and at $299 it’s a steal. Remember, this headset can play most VR games on Steam.

The only time we’ve seen a VR headset with this resolution reach a price this low was Black Friday.

Virtual reality experiences have historically been islands — unconnected apps and videos, sometimes platform-specific — but the past year has seen efforts to tie them together using device-agnostic tools and portals. Mozilla’s vision has been to leverage the web and browsers for VR, and now it’s launching a free WebVR “starter kit” developed with web and app development community Glitch.

Their kit is a five-part video course accompanied by interactive code examples, designed to help developers learn to use A-Frame, a free WebVR development framework. A-Frame creates VR content that can be viewed on HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Google Daydream, and Gear VR headsets, as well as desktop and laptop PCs, including everything from complex 3D animated objects to 360-degree panoramas.

“Our hope is that this starter kit will encourage anyone who has been on the fence about creating virtual reality experiences to dive in and get started,” Mozilla explained in a blog post today. To that end, interactive code examples are presented on Glitch’s site alongside step-by-step instructions and a viewing window, enabling developers to see how a “remix” of the code changes the VR output. One example lets you play with textured planets from our solar system, adding and editing spheres using simple HTML code.

Glitch’s Intro to WebVR is free and available now. Additional examples of A-Frame WebVR apps can be seen here.

Poor Nintendo will probably never be free of Switch VR speculation until it announces its own headset. The latest rumors suggest that could be this year.

Nintendo World Report cites multiple sources in saying Nintendo will announce the kit ‘as early as this year’. The report also claims that a small number of first-party games will get VR support. Go Nintendo then followed up on the report with its own source. The site claims that the headset will be a part of Nintendo’s Labo line of cardboard-based peripherals.

Labo was announced last year. It’s a child-friendly product line that encourages you to build makeshift controllers for specific games. That might mean that the rumored headset isn’t made of Cardboard itself but does utilize these peripherals for immersive control.

Take this all with a pinch of salt for now, but there are past stories that support the rumors. In late 2016 we reported that the company had filed a patent for a headset. Users plug the Switch console into the device much like that would a smartphone. Last year data miners also found what appeared to be a ‘VR Mode’ for the console.

Then again, there’s a lot of information that goes the other way too. We’ve reported on Nintendo executives downplaying interest in VR on numerous occasions. In fact last year the company said Labo isn’t meant to be an answer to VR on Switch. There’s also the fact that the Switch’s 720p screen and lack of six degrees of freedom (6DOF) tracking don’t make it an ideal fit for VR.

We’d love for it to be true, of course. We got a taste of what Mario Kart could be like in VR last year. It proves that Nintendo could create some amazing VR experiences.